PUBLIC OPTION NOT OPTIONAL!

I need to vent for a couple minutes here ... I am becoming increasingly annoyed and frustrated with the health care debate going on in Congress right now. Specifically, I am tired of Obama and the spineless senators in Washington being so wishy-washy on the public option. They keep talking about bipartisanship and compromise, blah, blah, blah ... Look, what we should have in this country is a single payer system that covers everyone. Since that is "off the table," however, then a public option IS THE COMPROMISE!

There was a great editorial in the New York Times recently that outlined some of the horrible tactics used by private insurance companies. Here's a piece of it ...

A House oversight subcommittee took a close look at a particularly shameful practice known as "rescission," in which insurance companies cancel coverage for some sick policyholders rather than pay an expensive claim. The companies contend that rescissions are rare. But Congressional investigators found that three big insurers canceled about 20,000 individual policies over a five-year period — allowing them to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims.

The companies typically argue that the policyholders withheld information about pre-existing conditions that would have disqualified them from coverage. But the subcommittee unearthed cases where the pre-existing conditions were trivial, or unrelated to the claim, or not known to the patient. When executives for the three companies were asked if they would be willing to limit rescissions to cases where the policyholder deliberately lied on an application form, all said they would not. This tactic will not be ended voluntarily.

Meanwhile, the Senate Commerce Committee was getting an earful from a former head of corporate communications for Cigna, a big health insurer. He charged that the industry deliberately confuses its customers by making it hard to obtain information about its practices and issuing incomprehensible documents.

He also charged that the companies "dump the sick," through rescissions and by purging small businesses whose employees’ claims exceed what underwriters expected. They are often hit with huge rate increases intended to force them to drop coverage.

I'm sorry, but that is simply unacceptable ... which is why I'm feeling much the same as Bob Cesca in his recent Huffington Post column. Here's a bit of it ...

If President Obama is truly serious about changing the way Washington operates, he'd begin to aggressively hector the entourage of lawmakers that I've not-so-affectionately nicknamed the "Coalition of the Corrupt and Spineless" (COCS) -- the Democratic Senators who have very obviously been bought off by the healthcare lobby, along with other almost-as-awful Democrats whose cowardice is only matched by their weakness of will.

Throw down, Mr. President ...

... There can be no denying that the COCS are flagrantly and unapologetically legislating against -- what's the word? -- overwhelming super-majority popular support for the public health insurance option. And why is that? I can't recall another example in recent memory when the collusion of lobbyists, corporate PACs and members of the United States Senate has been quite this obvious.

We can only conclude that the COCS are entirely ignoring the will of the American people because they're hiking the Appalachian Trail with the healthcare industrial complex.

Here's the thing ... Every single one of us is probably going to get pretty sick one day, and I'm tired of feeling like that event will be filled with non-stop insurance nightmares. I actually have a great insurance plan (generally speaking), but I don't feel at all comfortable. Why? Because -- if I were to need thousands of dollars worth of medical care -- I think my insurance company would drop me in a second (or maybe refuse to pay large chunks of my medical bills).

The fact is that 76% of Americans want a public option, President Obama wants a public option, and pretty much everyone thinks that insurance companies are the devil.

So, why is this so f'ing hard to get done!